The Au Pair

Life’s not all a bed of roses for Ashley Smeeton, in her mid-twenties and trying to run a private investigation agency in Montreal despite a temporary cash flow emergency. She’s as surprised as anyone though when she agrees to take a lucrative summer au pair job in the scenic Laurentian Mountains.

Montreal might be enduring a heat wave, but at Columbine Lodge, occupied by a few generations of immensely wealthy Sampsons, things are heating up as well. Between the mystery that surrounds four-year-old Meade and her beautiful, complicated mother Layla, and the lingering mood of past suffering in the old lodge, Ashley quickly realizes she’s in for an interesting ride.

And then there’s the proliferation of summer romance-quality men.

By the time the unexplained deaths commence, Meade has thoroughly succeeded in getting under Ashley’s skin. But the odd little girl with the big gift is by no means the only one in danger.

After The Winter

Rudderless after a series of setbacks, a wealthy young Montrealer named Sally Ryder discovers her dead mother had a secret life and she has an unsuspected half-sister. Helena Lane has written to Sally, inviting her to Midwinter, an isolated estate in the Eastern Townships. But before they can meet, Helena and her husband die under disturbing circumstances.

Sally feels compelled to visit Waverley anyway for a few days, to learn what she can about the sister she never knew. Her first shock is to find that Howard Lane has left everything, including Midwinter, to his beautiful secretary Janine. During a storm, Sally is unexpectedly snowed in over the holidays with Janine and an assortment of Midwinter guests and locals, including a nine-year-old budding sleuth named Ashley. It isn't long before Sally becomes entangled with a gruff young doctor from Boston in an effort to uncover the truth about her sister's mysterious life, and death.

Anna was born in Montreal and currently lives in Toronto. She’s been a reporter, a college lecturer and a horticultural advisor, as well as other things too numerous to mention/best forgotten. She was semi-finalist for the US Katherine Paterson YA prize and for Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award in the unpublished category. She reads obscure fiction in English and French and thinks Quebec is an underrecognized mise en scène for mystery and domestic suspense. AFTER THE WINTER is her first published novel. (more →)

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This month I’m interviewing Amazon international bestselling mystery writer, Judy Penz Sheluk. A Canadian, Judy writes two mystery series: the Glass Dolphin Mysteries (The Hanged Man’s Noose; A Hole in One) and the Marketville Mysteries (Skeletons in the Attic). Her short crime fiction appears in several collections. Judy is also an accomplished freelance writer, and she serves on the Board of Directors of Crime Writers of Canada, representing Toronto and Southern Ontario.

Anna: Because I write something that I (but no one else) calls Gothic cozy, I think a lot about the different kinds of mystery stories out there, who likes what and why. You’ve told me you write “amateur sleuth with an edge.” Can you tell me why you chose this intriguing sub-category and what you think it adds to the mystery genre?

Judy: Amateur sleuth with an edge was a term I coined when I couldn’t find one that actually fit my books. My books are cozy, in that they have an amateur sleuth, the requisite small town/community, and there’s no overt sex, violence or bad language—but there are also no cats, crafts or cookie recipes… the sort of things you might find in a more traditional cozy. Reviewers often comment that my books are darker in tone than a traditional cozy, and the plots a bit more complex. When I decided to write a novel, I wanted to write a book I’d like to read, a good escape from reality with some meat on the bones. I hope I’ve accomplished that.

Anna: Years ago a quotation from P.D. James lodged in my brain and has never left. She described readers of mysteries (and maybe writers too) as secretly in love with law and order. In part I think this was because of the way crime fiction gets resolved, in line with some version of capital J Justice. Agree or disagree? What, if anything, do crime novels contribute to our ideas of justice?

Judy: I’m not sure I’m secretly in love with law and order, but I do wish for a world where there are fewer bad guys, and the good guy always wins, where what goes around, comes around. So, yes, there is something innately satisfying about reading crime fiction, seeing justice fulfilled, even if it sometimes gives us false expectations of reality. But then again, it’s fiction, right?

Anna: What are your favourite and least favourite crime novel conventions? Have you ever gone out of your way in your books to deliberately bend some conventions and to what purpose?

Judy: Dead body by page 3 (or early on) is one convention that is both a favourite and a least favourite. If it’s done in a formulaic manner, I’m quick to close the book and move on. But if it’s done well, I can buy into it pretty quickly. That said, I love a slow, drawn out mystery. One author I really admire is Sara J. Henry (Troy Chance mysteries). I love the way she paces, slow and steady. At the opposite end of the pacing spectrum is John Sandford. He’s the master of fast-paced mystery/suspense. I never try to deliberately bend conventions, or stick to them, for that matter. My only goal is to write the story inside my head, and hope it translates to the page.

Anna: What makes Canadian crime novels unique?

Judy: I don’t think they are unique, other than in the way that every book, regardless of setting, is unique. I do believe it was very difficult to get a contract from a U.S. publisher for a mystery novel set in Canada, but I think that has changed/is changing, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Louise Penny, Maureen Jennings, Giles Blunt, and other talented authors like them.

Anna: Name three writers who influenced you on your writing journey, for better or worse, because you loved them or hated them. What did you get from them?

Judy: Barry Dempster, an award-winning Canadian poet and novelist. I took my first creative writing workshop with Barry in 2003. He taught me to “put the best words in the best order,” to avoid clichés, and to never use exclamation marks to express surprise, shock, anger etc. when the sentence should do the work, vs. the punctuation. It’s great advice, although of course, Elmore Leonard is famous for saying the same thing in a different way.

Agatha Christie: The queen of mystery, I read every one of her novels by the time I was twenty-five. The fact that they still hold up today – and are still being made into movies – speaks volumes for her talent and masterful storytelling.

L.M. Montgomery, but not for ANNE OF GREEN GABLES. When I was about eight, a family friend bought me EMILY CLIMBS for Christmas. It’s the story of a young woman, Emily Starr of New Moon, PEI, who wants to grow up to be a writer, and writes in her “Jimmy Book” by candlelight. I remember reading that book and thinking, “that’s what I want to be when I grow up.” I still have EMILY CLIMBS on my bookshelf, and have reread it more than once, as a child and as an adult. When I finally did get to writing my first novel, I named my protagonist Emily. It seemed only fitting.

Anna: What advice would you give a new writer starting out today in Canada?

Judy: I always quote Agatha Christie when I’m asked this question: “There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.”

Anna: Enough with the serious. What was the most embarrassing experience you ever had as a writer? What was the best moment you ever had?

Judy: Most embarrassing: Being invited to speak to a group of Girl Guides on “Career Day” when I was working as a freelance writer. The other speaker that evening made dolls… with hair and eyes to match each little girl there. Suffice it to say that it was a humbling experience. I don’t think too many little girls left there saying, “Hey, I want to grow up and be a writer.”

Best moment: Signing my first book contract (for THE HANGED MAN’S NOOSE) with Barking Rain Press. It was Canada Day 2014. I can still remember the sound of the cork on the champagne bottle popping. And dancing in the backyard, barefoot and laughing, with my husband, Mike, my 12 year-old Golden Retriever, Copper, trying to get in on the act.

Find Judy on her website/blog at www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she interviews other authors and blogs about the writing life. You can also find Judy on Facebook (facebook.com/JudyPenzSheluk) and Twitter (@JudyPenzSheluk) and on her Amazon author page, amazon.com/author/judypenzsheluk.

“An aspiring private investigator uncovers a mystery when she takes a job as an au pair.

Ashley Smeeton always dreamed of becoming a sleuth. When she was 9, she witnessed her first investigation when a murder mystery unfolded in her hometown. Now in her mid-20s, she has set up an agency in Montreal, but she is unable to accept clients until she receives her license from the government. In need of cash, she accepts a summer job as an au pair at Columbine Lodge in the Laurentian Mountains. Her client is Layla Sampson, a single mother with a 4-year-old daughter, Meade. When Ashley arrives at the lodge, she encounters an eccentric and wealthy but deeply dysfunctional family. Lionel Sampson owns the lodge and controls the finances. Along with Layla and Meade, he shares the home with his sister, Edyth, and nephew, Peter. After a slow start, Ashley bonds with the quiet but perceptive Meade and befriends members of the household staff, including the charming and seductive Jon Perez. What begins as a routine job takes an ominous turn when residents of the lodge die suddenly, and Ashley is drawn into a web of family secrets and treachery. Dowdall’s (After the Winter, 2017) latest novel offers a resourceful heroine, atmospheric settings, and well-plotted suspense. First introduced in After the Winter, Ashley is a likable heroine whose inquisitive nature helps her navigate the complicated dynamics of the Sampson family. Dowdall skillfully uses the settings throughout the tale, including the bustling city of Montreal—featuring “the thundering boxcars and the whine of the electric train”—and the lodge with its unique hillside design. Although the settings are effective, there are a few similarities between the lodge and Midwinter, the Quebec estate in After the Winter. Both are remote estates owned by wealthy but troubled families. Perhaps Ashley’s next case will keep her in Montreal. The storytelling is strong and confident, and Dowdall includes enough back story to satisfy both newcomers and established fans of the series. This installment should appeal to fans of Louise Penny.

I’m happy to welcome Canadian mystery author Anna Dowdall to the Power of 10 series. Today, Anna shares her extensive knowledge of Gothic suspense and her novels, After the Winter and The Au Pair.

What the heck is it anyway?

Everybody knows this type of story! It often features a decaying mansion, an isolated yet curious heroine, family secrets, sometimes a child in peril, dramatic weather, disguise and switched identities, and let us not forget menacing and/or intellectually-compromised lower orders. The book covers usually capture at least some of these things. As for what it’s all about, Gothic suspense, says Stephen Knight in Crime Fiction since 1800, “has powerful appeal as a genre speaking about—and validating—individual feeling, including fear and horror… It… makes central the female experience of powerlessness and oppression, and links these emotive forces to places redolent of the past, the obscure, the mysterious…” Nowadays the Gothic heroine is enterprising, she rises to the threat. She’s a brave inquirer into toxic secrecy and domestic chaos. She perceives danger where others are oblivious. She’s no shrinking violet either, her determination to act is the means of resolving the mystery. Which is why I reward her with a handsome and marriageable man sometimes, along with other desirable things such cold hard cash.

What’s the crossover with this domestic noir thing you keep reading about?

I think it was the American editor Sarah Weinman (check out her book Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives) who coined the term domestic noir, to describe some wonderful and under-recognized mid-century women writers who mix suspense and dangerous domestic scenarios and a female protagonist to tremendous effect. Writers like Ethel Lina White and Charlotte Armstrong. You have to go back a ways to discover that books like Gone Girl are really just standing on the shoulders of, imho, better antecedents. Lots of these domestic noir books are just saturated with Gothic mood, in a far from hokey way.

Why do you gravitate to it as a writer? What do you achieve with it?

Crime fiction is full of delicious cliches but some of the characters, especially in traditional hard-boiled tough-guy fiction, are pretty sexist. I want my Gothic ingenues, the ones wandering around the uncanny old house and picking up the “something is wrong” vibe, to have plenty of intellect as well as intuition. Also, I’ve taken the dangerous (because powerful) femme fatale cliche from old-school hard-boiled crime fiction and, after leading the reader down the garden path for a few hundred pages, turned it upside down. Plus, in my books femme fatales are actually allowed to live, they’re usually killed off! In fact, I like to mix up bedroom-eyed ingenues and soulful femme fatale types so you might have trouble distinguishing them by the time the book finishes. Sally Ryder in After the Winter might seem at first like just another ingenue on a romantic binge. But it’s her willingness to bend the rules and substitute other secrets for the ones she’s investigating that in the end gives her choices and decisions symbolic importance and moral weight, I hope.

How can escapist fiction be serious?

These conventions of the Gothic novel are perfect to explore the dangers that lurk within women’s domestic lives, and what is more serious and timely than that? Crime fiction in general allows writers to explore justice questions: questions like who really pays and who gets away with what. You can invest a fairly restrictive crime plot with as much social and moral significance as you want, for example by bending the conventions and changing the typical outcomes. You can present ideal revenges and undercut status quo justice outcomes that further victimize. That’s as good as Yann Martel and his talking tiger any day. What’s serious fiction anyway?

So many writers who are considered serious and literary have delved into the Gothic: all the Brontes, even Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, our own Margaret Atwood and Nobel laureate Alice Munro. There’s that whole Ontario Gothic aspect in Munro, that atmosphere that’s creepy and clings. Although my books are so far situated in Quebec, I think I will have to mine that Ontario mood at some point, it’s just so rich.

You’ve described your genre as Gothic Cozy. Where does Cozy come into things?

That was probably a slightly playful description, but it’s meant to hit on a mix of things I go after. If I cited the British director Sally Wainwright, known to us all via Netflix, as an example of “feminist cozy,” people might question my judgment. But think of how her female victims find almost superhuman warrior strength to fight back, for example in Happy Valley. Or how Last Tango in Halifax presents a woman living happily ever after, with a certain light disregard for the spot of murder in her past. What’s cozier than that? My books After the Winter and The Au Pair explore the worst possible things that can happen to women and then contrive in the conclusion to leave most of the women characters in a much better place, for them if not for justice norms. That’s downright utopian in some respects, and in stark contrast to the real world. What I say, to myself and to readers, is this: let’s examine those unlikely outcomes, let’s indulge in the solace of dreaming about them as at least logically possible.

So where does romance fit in?

Sometimes the terms romantic suspense and Gothic suspense are used almost interchangeably, and there’s usually a romance plot in Gothic suspense. The novel without sex and love is pretty rare, but as a writer of Gothic suspense I note a certain unstated or semi-stated distinction out there between “good” noir crime stories, that take a suitably cold and manly approach to romance and women in general, and allegedly sappy romance-based stories. All I can say is this: in so many instances of good Gothic suspense that I’ve read, while there are pro-forma romantic endings which usually symbolize the resolution of the mystery plot, the underlying themes often have little to do with romance. And the heroine in many cases seems to me to be less motivated by romance and interest in men than by other things—work, self-respect, children and their safety, relationships with other women, cats, revenge, money, equality, sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong, exorcising demons, her place in the world. You just have to dig down a little. Take Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca as an example: is the theme the triumph of love or is it a book about exacting justice across the grave?

Where is your writing going?

A very kind and old friend, who happens to be a professor of English at UC/Irvine, is convinced that I will write a dozen of these playfully dark little feminist genre novels and that over time I will delve so deeply into the Gothic and its possibilities that I will write myself out the other side. That could be. I have told myself however that I would write a half dozen. And even as I wander through the conventions, savouring, twisting and discarding as I go, it’s just as likely I’ll end up in some other type of light genre fiction as anything that would qualify as serious. When I think of my characters, I realize my effort is to make them mixed. I want them to have characteristics of their stereotype (I do love my genre), but also a certain mutability, with traits that defy and contradict the stock type. For example, Ashley Smeeton, my PI and series heroine beginning with The Au Pair, is likeable in a quirkily aloof way—she’s meant to be a foil to the emotional Gothic suspense plots she finds herself in. So far, so standard. But then, unlike stock detectives who never change, I find she’s far from impervious to contact with the uncanny. So I’m not entirely sure where she’s headed. I can say though that in book three Ashley’s unlikely to escape a psychic wound. Does that mean my writing is getting “weightier?” Maybe in the sense of number of words, because the third book seems well on the way to becoming a longer book.

What are your final words on the Gothic?

I invite you to check out my website at http://www.annadowdall.com, where I muse about everything Gothic-related, from Kim Novak’s charm as a femme fatale and Hillary Clinton’s appetite for escapist crime fiction, to the unknown western side entrance, down dark and little-noticed steps, to Toronto’s High Park, scene of the Margaret Millar 1945 classic The Iron Gates.

Yes, that time has come. The Au Pair is released today, and to celebrate there’s a giveaway. If you sign up to receive email notifications from this website (my occasional blogs, basically) you’ll be in the running for a prize of two nice trade paperbacks of both my books, After the Winter and its sequel The Au Pair. The deadline is October 31st at midnight, so don’t delay. This is a pretty new website, so anyone who already signed up is eligible as well. How do you follow me? It’s easy, click Follow and/or see my Contact page.

The discovery of a secret half sister leads a woman into a web of deception and intrigue in this debut novel.

At 23, Sally Ryder finds herself unmoored following a betrayal by an unfaithful fiance. Then an article in a Montreal paper brings news of a sudden loss. Helena Lane, Sally’s half sister, was killed in a car accident along with her husband, Howard, while returning to Midwinter, their estate in Quebec. Sally had learned her mother was previously married after receiving a letter from Helena explaining the family connection and expressing a desire to meet Sally. Despite her sibling’s death, Sally wants to learn more and travels to Quebec. While staying in the town of Waverley, she befriends Dr. Tom Munro, Howard’s childhood friend. They are shocked to discover that Howard’s secretary, Janine Douglas, will inherit the entire estate, and their surprise turns to suspicion when they meet her friend Carson DeWitt and his sister, Debbie, who have a keen interest in Janine and Midwinter. Sally and Tom’s probe leads them to suspect Helena’s and Howard’s deaths may not have been an accident. As their attraction deepens, they are in a race to uncover the truth before tragedy strikes again. Dowdall’s impressive novel is an entertaining and suspenseful entry in the gothic mystery genre. The setting is a key component of the tale, and Quebec and Midwinter are vividly rendered. The author captures the unique rhythms of life in this picturesque community, from the locals who call Quebec home to the wealthy newcomers seeking a second residence. The strong setting is matched by her well-developed characters. Sally is an earnest and intelligent heroine whose investigation into Helena’s death leads to an unexpected romance with Tom. Their relationship develops slowly in scenes that crackle with amorous tension. The supporting cast includes the mysterious Janine and the precocious Ashley Smeeton, a 9-year-old with a love of Nancy Drew books and dreams of becoming a detective. Dowdall’s fast-paced narrative unfolds like a classic Agatha Christie mystery, with unexpected and satisfying plot twists.

Popular Montreal newspaper columnist Bernard Mendelman has been kind enough to recommend my book to Hillary Clinton, which is of course him being nice to a new writer, and also dangling a hook for his readers. But Hillary’s taste in Eastern Townships murder mysteries must be familiar to most Canadians now, since her recent high-profile visit to Louise Penny.

Once in a while you read about Hillary’s reading preferences. How do people know these things? Regardless, as well as Louise Penny, she apparently likes Jacqueline Winspear. Sometimes a pundit will take a swipe at this preference for the cozyesque (it’s always open season on Hillary, and as if the reading of dark thrillers and/or serious fiction were a virtue.) Me, I read everything. But Penny and Winspear are both near the boundary of my tolerance for this type of light crime writing, which some people call cozy and others call classic golden age detective stories.

Funny, maybe, because AFTER THE WINTER, with its romantic suspense elements, its detailed descriptions of the social sphere and meticulous meting out of justice (my way), probably falls into that category. Not to mention my second book, THE AU PAIR, out October 11, which has as an important theme child care for pete’s sake! I like to think I write Gothic Cozy, mingling the fear with the domestic, both its pitfalls and its comforts. No one has yet offered Gothic Cozy as a category, so I’m offering it.

Anyway, back to Hillary. When I read Winspear in particular I wonder, I really do, at the woman who after Angela Merkel was once the world’s most powerful woman, on the hook for Benghazi, reading about these uncomplicated and decent people (in some cases the virtue positively shines) surrounded by evil that they will manage, somehow, to push back. I wonder in particular about the exact nature of the appeal.

Years ago I read an interview with a Yale professor, eminent in her field, which I think was science or engineering, but who’d had a lot of hardship in her life, an inordinate amount. She was a widow, she had four children. I was raising a young kid myself then, so I related, although the pressures on her had to be much much greater, or at least, very different, than mine, since I had deliberately picked a camouflaged existence in the slow lane. Anyhow, this Yale professor said in the interview that it was novels that saved her. Maybe a few other things as well, but it was the novels she dwelt on. She talked about the stack of books by her bedside table that she could never do without. These books were for 3 am reading, reading when she woke in the dead hours of the night and thought too much about everything, and there was only fiction to distract her and take her to the morning.

I’ve no trouble imagining Hillary Clinton reading Louise Penny and Jacqueline Winspear for much the same reason. If anyone is more intimately acquainted than most with the real world, with the noir in life, with the disturbed nature of the times we live in, it’s Hillary surely. And who better than she to understand the necessity of a temporary escape, and the benefit of it. So the next time you hear someone dissing light escapist fiction, just remember: don’t assume people read escapist fiction because they’re weak or can’t face reality. Sometimes, they read it so that they can go on facing the no-good-outcome challenges confronting them and shouldering the heavy burdens that most of us would never ever willingly take up.

In which I chat with Joanne Guidoccio, Canadian author of the Gilda Greco mystery series

Tell us a little bit about your series, including where the idea originated?

Too Many Women in the Room is the second book in the Gilda Greco Mystery Series. Based in Northern Ontario, these books feature a fifty-something Italian woman, her relatives, deserving and undeserving men, food, and murder.

While undergoing cancer treatments, I gravitated toward cozy mysteries. After devouring over fifty books in that genre, I imagined the following scenarios: What if a lottery winner moves back to her hometown and finds herself involved in a murder investigation? And what if all the victims are blondes? I put pen to paper and started the first draft of A Season for Killing Blondes. It was released by The Wild Rose Press in June 2015.

A Different Kind of Reunion, Book 3 in the series, will be released in the spring of 2018.

Who are your favourite writers and why? What writers have influenced you?

I admire late blooming authors who have launched successful second acts. Two favorites come to mind: Maeve Binchy and Louise Penny. Their novels and writing journeys have inspired me to launch my own second act as a writer. From Maeve, I’ve learned that success is not a pie where only a select few have access to the slices. I’ve taken several pages out of Louise’s disciplined approach to structure my own writing practice.

Where do you see your writing going next?

I intend to write more books in the Gilda Greco Mystery series. On the back burner, I have a cancer memoir and a collection of angel stories.

Tell us about your writing process. Do you have set times of day/number of words? Do you have a favorite writing place or routine? What do you drink, listen to, avoid, need … to write?

When I retired and started writing full time, I expected to be inspired each day. Everything was in place—business cards, new computer, dreams of a runaway best-seller—but my underdeveloped writing muscles refused to budge.

After some experimentation, I came up with a daily regimen. Nothing too dramatic, but it works for me. I like to sleep in each day and enjoy a leisurely breakfast. But after my second cup of coffee, I start writing. My goal –1,000 words a day. At first, I used the oven timer to keep me on task, but that annoying sound reminded me of incessant school bells, so I invested in a bird clock. Each hour, one of my feathered friends, among them the Downy Woodpecker, Belted Kingfisher, and Great Horned Owl, chirp and remind me to pace myself.

What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?

Experiment until you find your own unique voice and a warm, supportive environment where your words can flow freely. Sign up for creative writing courses—online or offline—that expose you to short stories, children’s and adult writing, creative nonfiction, and poetry. And, most important of all, enjoy the journey.

What’s the best advice someone gave you?

“It’s okay to fall out of love with your manuscript.” I received this advice from Brian Henry, a creative writing instructor at Ryerson University. During one of his workshops, he recommended putting manuscripts aside before starting the editing process. He didn’t specify a timeline but stressed that we can’t improve our work until we fall out of love with it.

Thank you Joanne!

Book Summary

When Gilda Greco invites her closest friends to a VIP dinner, she plans to share David Korba’s signature dishes and launch their joint venture— Xenia, an innovative Greek restaurant near Sudbury, Ontario. Unknown to Gilda, David has also invited Michael Taylor, a lecherous photographer who has throughout the past three decades managed to annoy all the women in the room. One woman follows Michael to a deserted field for his midnight run and stabs him in the jugular.

Gilda’s life is awash with complications as she wrestles with a certain detective’s commitment issues and growing doubts about her risky investment in Xenia. Frustrated, Gilda launches her own investigation and uncovers decades-old secrets and resentments that have festered until they explode into untimely death. Can Gilda outwit a killer bent on killing again?

In 2008, Joanne took advantage of early retirement and decided to launch a second career that would tap into her creative side and utilize her well-honed organizational skills. Slowly, a writing practice emerged. Her articles and book reviews were published in newspapers, magazines, and online. When she tried her hand at fiction, she made reinvention a recurring theme in her novels and short stories. A member of Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, and Romance Writers of America, Joanne writes cozy mysteries, paranormal romance, and inspirational literature from her home base of Guelph, Ontario.

New novel a unique pleasure for former Cornwallite Anna Dowdall

Anna Dowdall, who was born in Montreal and currently lives in Toronto, has written After the Winter, a crime novel set in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

“I have many fond memories (of Cornwall), and I still have friends there,” said Dowdall, who lived in the Seaway City from the ages of one to 15.

Dowdall, who attended Ecole Saint Jean Bosco on Eighth Street, has been a reporter, a college lecturer and a horticultural advisor, as well as other things “too numerous to mention (and/or) best forgotten,” she said.

Dowdall was a semi-finalist for the U.S. Katherine Paterson YA prize, and for Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award in the unpublished category.

What’s it like to have a first book released?

“It fills your head with all kinds of unfamiliar thoughts and feelings, and at the same time it’s very pragmatic,” Dowdall said. “You have to work hard to get your name out there, and get some decent reviews.”

Dowdall has known for decades that she wanted to write books.

“(It goes back to) when I was a little kid growing up on Andre Avenue – and learning about the world through the Standard-Freeholder, I might add,” she said. “For all kinds of reasons this has taken a while. . . this somehow adds a unique pleasure to the whole thing.”

Known to read plenty of obscure fiction in English and French, Dowdall thinks Quebec is an under-recognized mise en scene for mystery and domestic suspense.

After the Winter has a wealthy young Montrealer, Sally Ryder, rudderless after a series of setbacks, discovering her dead mother had a secret life, and that she has a half-sister. Helena Lane has written to Sally, inviting her to Midwinter, an isolated estate in the Eastern Townships, but before they can meet, Helena and her husband die under disturbing circumstances.

Sally feels compelled to visit, though, to learn about the sister she never knew. But her first discovery is a shock: Howard Lane has left everything, including Midwinter, to his beautiful secretary Janine.

Unexpectedly snowed in with an assortment of Midwinter guests and locals, it isn’t long before Sally becomes entangled with a gruff young doctor from Boston in an effort to uncover the truth about her sister’s mysterious death — and life.

Meanwhile, the bodies pile up.

The novel has already received some critical acclaim, including from Joan Barfoot, an award-winning author who wrote in the London Free Press that After the Winter “has a nicely complicated, sinister plot, a gothic setting, romantic entanglements and some ambiguous characters.”

The best review has come from Dowdall’s daughter, Daisy.

“I suspect she may have been a tiny bit skeptical, (but) when she finished my book, she texted me: ‘Brava brava!! I can’t wait to read the next one now! You have yourself a loyal reader in me,’” Dowdall recounted.

“It’s not easy being a single parent, as every single parent knows, but when you can show your kid something you’ve done like that and they respond, it’s the best of feelings.”

After the Winter has been published by The Wild Rose Press, in New York.

When you get your first good book review, and not from some writer to whom you will be reciprocating, bless their hearts, but from a celebrated writer like Joan Barfoot, I’m afraid there’s no end to your desire to reblog it and mention it at the drop of a hat. So here is the beginning of Joan’s review, in the London Free Press and several other Postmedia outlets:

“It’s a silent and subtle tip of the hat when Sally Ryder, protagonist of Torontonian Anna Dowdall’s first crime novel, spots a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 chiller Rebecca lying around in another character’s home.

Eighty years on, Rebecca remains a best-selling, much-filmed classic in a genre that might loosely be called gothic crime romance, a subcategory of crime fiction to which Dowdall’s After the Winter also readily belongs, and in which she gives that passing nod to one of the best.

Du Maurier set her tale on her home turf of Cornwall in England. Dowdall, born in Montreal, sets hers in a small Quebec ski-country community during a 1999 winter more or less isolated by a series of brutal snowstorms.

Sally Ryder is a wealthy young Montrealer, a 23-year-old orphan grieving the deaths of her parents and the betrayal of her now-ex-fiance which, since he was also her employer, means she’s now unemployed.

She has a supportive best friend and loads of money, but that’s about it…”

Here’s the rest of the review: http://www.lfpress.com/2017/08/25/nicely-complicated-but-chronology-confuses

And a post like this deserves a good pulp cover of du Maurier’s classic, so here is that too. What I like about this one is how spare it is, and yet the elements are there, the enigmatic young woman in the foreground, the Gothic house just visible over the nameless heroine’s shoulder. The artist has added a nice touch, the famous rhododendrons peeking out from behind the figure’s clenched arms: because in Gothic suspense, nature has a way of rearing its head…